“Millennials are leaving the church!”“Young adults don’t believe anything anymore!”“The church has lost its voice in a wayward culture.”

These dire headlines describe the reality of faith and church for today’s young adults, often referred to as “millennials.” The hasty exit of millennials from the church is well documented, with Cascadia’s young adults often leading the way. The future of the church is literally disappearing right before our eyes.

But in many ways the church actually creates the problem of decreasing engagement. In particular, the church’s response to millennials is often overly reactionary and thus incomplete. Focusing too narrowly on retention, churches don’t foster mature faith, let alone actually retain millennials. Instead they risk encouraging ideals and practices centered more on selfish consumption than selfless discipleship. The result is unsustainable discipleship of millennials in Cascadian culture.